


Sam Winchester and the art of pretending

by sebviathan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mental Disintegration, POV Second Person, sam is a psychopath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:30:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebviathan/pseuds/sebviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most important thing about kids is that they don't understand why bad things happen, but you always did understand. They happen because of you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sam Winchester and the art of pretending

It's hard, being Sam Winchester.

You grow up, but you never really get to be a kid. Even though it's your older brother who is forced by your dad to grow up too fast and you're the one he's told to protect—you're still not a kid. You don't feel like one. _Kids_ live in a bubble of innocence and hold onto those around them to make sure they stay afloat. They have friends and family to tell them stories that they believe without question because that's what kids do. And the most important thing about kids is that they don't understand why bad things happen.

But you? You were never a kid. You were a child at some point in your life like everyone else, but you never held onto anything because you never needed anything but yourself. You questioned everything from the start. And you were always surrounded by nothing but bad, already knowing why all of it happened, on some level—because of _you_.

Everything is your fault and it makes you angry that other people are trying to fix it for you. Plenty of things make you angry, really. Sometimes, the people that you're meant to trust—Dean and Dad—make you angrier than anything else. You're just so angry all the time, and you don't know why.

It soon turns out that anger is probably the only thing you _can_ feel. Properly, anyway. You feel sad that you never got to know your mother but Dean and your dad did, but that's really more jealousy and guilt, which can be reduced to anger. You don't need to be older to realize that this isn't normal.

Normal is all you ever want or try to be, and that's a confusing mix of trying to be like your family as well as completely unlike them. You can never really _feel_ the way they do, so you pretend. You watch the people around you and fake it so hard that you actually believe it, and soon enough you almost trick yourself into thinking that all those years you were just a little broken—but now you're fixed.

Truth is, though, there was never anything broken about you to fix. This is just how you were made, and you’re wrongly trying your best to rewire yourself.

So you mistake enjoyment of one's company for friendship and fondness for love, and even though deep down you know it's fake, it's much healthier than anything you have at home. Dean and John aren't exactly experts on normal relationships.

You fill up the emptiness you feel (or lack thereof) inside with goals and a drive to be normal, and you pick a profession that suits your intellectual and emotional capabilities and just _go for it_.

The drive to be normal distracts you from the fact that all of it's fake.

You get away from the people who try to keep you from being normal, and life is good. You're an adult, you're so much better at pretending than you ever were—to the point that you've forgotten that you're even pretending. Everything is set in place and your old life is gone and it's all so _norma_ l.

And then in one fell swoop, everything normal about you comes crashing down. The things you've tricked yourself into loving are destroyed, and you're distraught because now you have no cover to pull over your head anymore. How can you pretend, now?

You do, though. Just not quite as much. Your brother gives you something new to put your drive towards—something relatively normal, at least for the life you always knew with your family. You really need that drive.

It doesn't stop like you think it will; it just keeps going. As time goes on, it's harder and harder to pretend again. Not to the victims in your cases—to them, it's easy—but to _Dean_. He doesn't realize that everything he sees of you is not entirely real, but you think he might see through the cracks sometimes and not realize it.

You are far from normal, and you start to realize it. There are dark parts of you that begin to resurface, and instead of pretending, you accept it. But then you have to hide it again because it's not okay to accept it.

Then the Cage opens and you have something besides anger to truly feel for the first time in your life. You realize, in fact, why you've always been so angry.

It's because the empty space that you've never managed to fill, no matter how hard you tried, is right where Lucifer fits. He's the missing piece. And that's far from normal.

So the one thing that makes you feel whole—that makes you _feel_ , and the one man who looks at you as though you are _better_ than normal, who you know has been with you but just out of reach your whole life... you spurn him. You have to. Because he's the Devil and it's not right to trust him.

You pretend not to trust him. And you pretend that your heart doesn't break.

When he's finally with you, and you understand him completely, you stop pretending. For a few thousand years, you don't have to pretend at all. Granted, it's the Cage. And it's torture no matter how hard Lucifer tries to protect you from it. But you’re finally with him, and in an extremely twisted way, it feels right.

Out of nowhere, you're out of the Cage and you have to pretend right away because you don't even remember. And when you do remember, it's too much, _far_ too much, for anyone to bear, but you do bear it, and you pretend that you're okay. At least you're only pretending on the outside, now. About everything, not just the hallucinations.

You're going insane, but at least you can admit it to yourself.

There's an intense feeling of betrayal when your hallucinations of Lucifer torture you, and you're slightly in the dark as to why. But you can't help just _waiting_ for the hallucinations to come if only to hear his voice and see him, no matter how much it hurts, what he's doing to you.

You don't know what's worse—realizing that the Lucifer you see isn't real or thinking that the one being in all of existence that you truly love is torturing you.

Actually, the worst thing is when he's gone entirely.

So it's back to lying to Dean constantly and a frustratingly endless cycle of not feeling guilty but feeling guilty, at the same time, because of that. You're not lying to yourself, but you pretend like you always have and you keep everyone thinking that you genuinely care. Everyone (naturally) thinks you're better off with Lucifer gone, too.

_You are Sam Winchester, and you are tired of pretending._


End file.
